Miniature Flowers Book: Someone recommended the book "Making Miniature Flowers with Polymer Clay" by Barbara Quast - - it is a BEAUTIFUL book but it is not 1/12th scale - something much larger.

Lesley, Johannesburg, South Africa

70’s Style Shag: Today I installed the shag carpeting in my That 70s House on Sorority Row.

Using a tip I saw in the SS archives I went to the dollar store and bought four cheap terry cloth towels in the colors I wanted. Cost: $4.Then I attached a nice sized section of each to poster board using 3M Super77 spray adhesive. I made paper templates of the room floors. Then I used my templates to cut out the carpet sections to the correct sizes. Then some fine trimming and they were in place. I may use a bit of Yes glue to tack them to the floor. I am really pleased with how they look. Perfect scale "shag" look I was going for. Total cost to carpet the 4 rooms: $6 including the cost of the cardboard. I plan on using wrapping paper for the bathroom floor and printable tiles for the kitchen. I have some nice drapes I hung and will be making some tie-die curtains or swags for the "hippie" bedroom.

John Medeiros

60s Décor: First of all, are you doing a 'mainstream' 60s house or a 'hippie/trendy' 60s house? Early 60s (think 'Space Age', Jetsons, ultra-mod) or mid-to-late 60s (think macramé, earthy stuff)? I would scour your library, thrift stores, and used bookstores for decorating books or magazines from the 60s. Once you stop laughing, take notes.

1) Mainstream early 60s decor you can see probably the easiest on reruns of the 'Dick Van Dyke Show'. Think simple lines and upholstered furniture (sofas, chairs) on spindly peg legs. Color schemes would probably be in pastels with highly contrasting accent colors, like pale yellow with medium blue or chartreuse green with cherry red.
2) Space age or trendy early 60s used a lot of white with red, purple, or orange accents. Piet Mondrian was a big influence on this group, as was the film 'Clockwork Orange'. Reruns of the original Star Trek, especially scenes shot in the crew's quarters, will give you the look. One thing I like about this era is the 'breaking the space' concept; that is, often a section of a room's floor would be raised and lowered and then the whole room would be carpeted the same. Beds would be mattresses sunk or raised in these carpeted area; I've also seen an entire dining area sunk in a carpeted pit where the chairs were a step-like level and only the table was a separate piece of furniture. The tulip chair was big.
3) Hippie look: Different rooms painted different bold colors, with lots of rock posters (particularly the ones from the San Francisco artists, like Mouse); bead curtains, ethnic artifacts.
4) Late 60s 'earthy' look (bleeds over into the early 70s): orange, avocado, leaf green and mustard yellow were the big colors, furniture was heavy, floor pillows were hot, macramé and house plants were all over the place.

Molly

I was so inspired by their work that it convinced me to make my own beds for the 70s sorority house I'm working on. Got out the strip wood and glue and made a set of bunkbeds and two platform beds. I covered household sponges with tie-dye flannel for groovy mattresses and now they are ready to dress. I stained the platform beds violet and painted the bunks white and decoupaged a heart pattern on them. I was really pleased with the results and it freed up mini money to let me splurge on the modern living room set I wanted from HBS. Here are some pics:
http://www.wishbooktoys.com/dollhouse/sales/platform.jpg
http://www.wishbooktoys.com/dollhouse/sales/bunks.jpg
Thanks to a lot of SS friends, this sorority house will have a number of "house mothers". The macramé hangers, beads for the curtains, fabric for bedspreads all came from the great gang on this list. Here is a photo of the macramé hangers from Jacquie with pots and plants I made. (Thanks to the recent plant making talk here. I also made the rolled bamboo window shades. I carefully cut the shades from large straw mats from the dollar store. I lightly dotted the edges with tacky glue to keep from fraying, then rolled and glued the bottoms to look like they were rolled up. Then I glued a piece of thin, stained stripwood at the top. I added brown thread to look like the cords. The plant hooks are the "hook" end of a hook & eye. I cemented it to the wall with Household GOOP and let set overnight before hanging:
http://www.wishbooktoys.com/dollhouse/sorority/hang2.jpg
Here is one of the doorways with a beaded curtain I made from beads I got from several SSers. I used the idea someone mentioned here for the curtain rod - a slit plastic drinking straw, then just slide the lead bead of each strand into the "rod". I reinforced with some magnatack to keep the bead strands from pulling out. Let set overnight. Then I hung the rod in the doorway with contact cement.
http://www.wishbooktoys.com/dollhouse/sorority/bead1.jpg

John Medeiros

Tea Shop Floor: I have been in several small sandwich, or tea shops that have a wood floor, but have painted-on rugs. One painted rug has a medium green center and a 7 inch white border with red roses. I suppose you would have to paint the rug on the floor before you put on the ceiling.

MAP in Puyallup

HUMMEL PLATES: Dolores who was looking for these earlier this week, go to www.tias.com and you'll find enough to stock a china shop. They even look like the right size to fit buttons or soda cap liners without manipulation, just printed right off the site.

Loretta Sniarowski

Edwardian Toys: Someone asked how to make mini dolls for an Edwardian Toy Shop - I didn't answer right away as I wanted to check the time line to make sure I knew what I was talking about: Edwardian refers to the time during King Edward VII 's reign which was 1901- 1910. So that gives you loads of possibilities for dolls and toys. If you can't afford finished mini-mini dolls, you can make some out of Sculpey (Just use a little ball for head and tinier balls for hands) stuck on wire, which you can wrap with stuffing and then dress. Or I've seen dolls with heads made of beads with faces painted on. You can paint a tiny plastic baby doll with matte flesh-colored paint to resemble bisque. Look on the back cover of the Leffie Lane paper doll book (By Dover publications) for all kinds of toys from that time - those particular paper dolls appeared from 1908 - 1910. Besides dolls, there are other toys: a clown doll, a monkey, a lamb on a rolling platform, toy elephant, dog and bunny, doll carriage, doll bed and furniture, a roadster, stuffed bears, toy pony, and an oriental doll. Other ideas are jack-in-the-box, marionettes, balls, boats, and of course a dollhouse with furniture. Sounds like fun. And a lot of these things can be made from little plastic toys and charms and stuff you might have in your junk drawer.

Paulette from Indiana

Horses: Breyer makes horses in 4 sizes, 2 of which can work with dollhouse minis. I say "can work with" because Breyer isn't really interested in scale. Fortunately, real horses come in several sizes, so we just need to worry about body type. Basically, the Classics size goes with 1" and Stablemates go with 1/2". Traditional size, which is what you usually find in the toy stores and which has the most variety, is too big. As a remaker, I saw and drill and carve and even melt body parts to make the horses more realistic before painting several coats and adding hair manes and tails. It's possible to reposition body parts too but there are horror stories of all that work coming apart later so I try to keep that to a minimum.

Denise Pritchett

70’s Beaded Curtain: At the Dollar store you should be able to find strings of those small plastic beads that can be easily cut with scissors (look in the ribbon section too, sometimes they come in rolls). Then take a plain white plastic straw, cut to fit across the top of the doorway, and slit it very carefully with a razor on one side. Feed the plastic beads (cut into proper lengths) into the slit and glue the straw to the top of the doorway.

Ann in Thorold, Ontario

Air Plants: Air plants are known as epiphytes - plants that absorb what they need from the air through their leaves, not through their roots. They are able to tolerate long periods without water, but it is also difficult to over water them. They do not need direct sun. After blooming the plants reproduce 1-8 offspring from the side of the mother, which can later be separated, and so on and so on. Having kept air plants and seen them bloom, I cannot understand why you would make that statement? Maybe you have be conned?

http://www.airplants.com/

Noni

Air ferns: There are different things referred to as air ferns. I have seen bundles of fine green ferny branches which appear to be artificial (although they are not) and I believe these are what miniaturists are using. I believe they are possibly dried and painted, although I am not sure. There are also epiphytic ferns which often hang on to other plants and have a well developed root system. These plants gather moisture from the air and grow in this way. I have many epiphytic ferns and orchid plants in my garden.

Jacqui in Hilo, Hawaii

Air Plants - Air Fern: If you go to the airplant site you will see that airplants are real and need misting. Very real looking. They come from the bromeliad family. They absorb water through their leaves.

As for airferns, (the ones at the counter in WalMart), they are dead and dyed green but are very cute in landscaping with the same effect as airplants but they don't need water. They need to sit and look pretty but not as real looking. Have used both.

SuLin

Attaching Lamp Shades: To attach a lamp shade to a lamp, you have to buy or make a "harp", just like in real lamps. Take a look at the real lamps you have. Wire can be bent into the proper shape. A thin piece of metal or even cardstock with a tiny hole in it gets attached inside the shade. Slide the hole over the pointy part of the harp, using a tiny bead as a finial!

Alice Zinn

Modifying resin: After I am done with my carving work on resin figures (using a Dremel tool and small steel cutters), I lightly sand to smooth out the area as needed, then use acrylic paint to repaint or touch up the carved area. (which now looks white). I don't handle these much, so I have never sealed them, but you could easily spray them with matte sealer if you prefer. There are lots of resin figures for sale cheap around the various holidays - this is just one way you might be able to modify and use them at other times.

Bonnie Gibson - Tucson, Arizona

Blue Willow: If you can find plain white ginger jars, you can print off several copies of the blue willow plate pattern from one of the china matching sites, then spray with acrylic to seal and use nail scissors to cut the motifs and decoupage them onto the jar. Or if your jar need not open, stack beads to get the shape, paint, and decoupage. I had a fine time this way making "china" for Olivia's house -- used button plates and saucers, with cups made from the tiniest size of bells painted to match with alphabet pasta D handles, then decoupaged with bits of the china pattern.

Don't know what your fruit juice packaging is like over there, but in the States it comes in half-gallons with a screw-on cap safety-sealed with pull-tabs attached to slightly cupped white plastic circles that make dandy bowls decoupaged the same way. The pull-tabs have plenty of other DIY uses - wreath bases, hanging loops for scarf-type curtain swags, cut in half to use as bead-vase handles, etc.

Loretta. Sniarowski

Blue Willow: An option, if you have a scanner, find a design in catalog, magazine etc. or draw one. Scan, reduce and print on decal paper. Transfer onto a solid white plates, etc. and there you have your willow design! Fimo plates are also an option using the same method. If you are applying a design onto a colored plate, jar, canister, etc. you can print out on light tracing paper, apply to plate and Modpodge for a finish.

Brooke, Wa

Blue & White China: You might take a look at the stuff on the Dollshouse Emporium Site.

http://www.dollshouse.com Their stuff is very reasonable and the postage not too unreasonable. The following blue & white jars are nice quality: 5517 Tall Hexagonal Jar & Lid (Quite Large), 5518 Round Pot & Lid, 5519 Blue & White Ginger Jar & Lid, 5524 Rice Bowl with Lid, and 5736 Small Ginger Jar & Lid.

Lesley, Johannesburg South Africa

Mini Action Figures: I used the 1" tall Star Wars micro machine figures available in the toy stores when I needed mini action figures and models. I just used my X-Acto knife and paint to transform them into the characters I wanted. For Batman and Robin...the same company makes several play sets with those very figures in them. If your Toys R Us does not have any ...they are always listed on eBay. Here is the link to the boy's room I used them in: http://www.wishbooktoys.com/boys/ Look closely at the "Mummy" model and you will see hi is really C3PO in disguise. Dracula was Obi-Wan Kenobi :) You might also look at the tiny HO and N scale people that are sold in the railroad shops...with a bit of paint, they can be transformed as well.

John Medeiros

Mini Embroidery Hoops: The perfect 3/4" mini hoops are the wedding rings sold in card and paper shops for trims on shower and wedding favors. They can be painted if you are a stickler but they come in silver and gold.

Gail

Mini Embroidery Hoops: I think they might be easy to make with the veneer (without adhesive and about 1" wide) on a roll products out there and some findings (along with a drilled hole to connect). I have some veneer that is a light wood that looks like an in scale version of the stuff the real size hoops are) With the scale and thickness of fabric involved think they would have to be made after the piece they are to hold is made... have sliced this veneer (with a straight edge ruler and sharp X-Acto knife) stuff into fan sticks( one for each side for an embossed fan from my wedding response cards into a 12th scale fan) ran into the thickness problem (and thus the need to make one at a time to check for fit) when making tops for etui boxes. Even cutting from a pattern the fit varies. The pattern (that you will make) is a starting point. With the etuis, the size varied whether I reinforced the corners (with tiny strips of strapping tape) or not.

Debbie